Last week, six of 11 San Francisco supervisors signed off on an initiative asking voters to rename the San Francisco International Airport in Milk's honor.

Milk was the first openly gay person elected to office in California, possibly the nation, when he became a supervisor in 1978. But he served only 11 months before being killed, along with Mayor George Moscone, by a disgruntled former supervisor, Dan White, who had quit the board but then decided he wanted his old job back. Moscone refused and White, a former police officer, gunned him and Milk down in their City Hall offices.

San Francisco's Moscone Center is named after the late mayor, but there is no structure or building named in Milk's memory. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

There are eight airports nationwide named for individuals, most of them for presidents such as New York's Kennedy and Washington, D.C.'s Reagan.

Whether San Francisco voters believe Milk rises to that stature awaits the vote in November.